A New Use for Tag Clouds

The an intriguing new use for a tag cloud. The Times' online version features two clouds, one for US President George W. Bush's recent 2006 State of the Union address, the other for his 2002 speech. A tag cloud generally refers to a visual weighted list of a website's tags. According to the Flickr, highlighting the most clicked-on tags; even Steve Rubel's tag cloud feature to highlight the searches conducted on the PR-focused Eurekster. But the Times concept sheds new light on what's possible with tag clouds. By turning every word in both speeches into tags, it's easy to see where the focus shifted from 2002-shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks-to 2006. "Security," "terror," and "weapons" were oft-repeated in the 3,875-word speech four years ago; the address earlier this week(which weiged in at 5,433 words) featured an emphasis on economy, a word the President uttered 16 times. There's huge potential for this approach to tag clouds; expect to see more of it. Hat tip to Poynter Online's Shel Holtz is principal of a shel of my former self